Dr Yunupingu was the unlikeliest of pop stars. An Aboriginal man in an Aboriginal band, singing in an Aboriginal language about the Aboriginal fight for land. Yet as the frontman of Yothu Yindi, he stormed the charts.

Before he was all over Video Hits and being named Australian of the Year, Yunupingu was a pioneering teacher who became the country’s first Aboriginal school principal. As part of his work, he developed a unique series of teaching methods that were culturally appropriate for north-east Arnhem Land.

“I see now that a lot of what motivated [my] white teachers was the view that it was only when Yolngu stop being Yolngu that we could become Australians,” he said in an ABC interview about his own school days at Yirrkala, Northern Territory.

He was determined to foster Yolngu identity at home, and to share it with the world. And so Yothu Yindi was born.

“My good friend was very much into the notion that our culture is your culture,” the band’s American drummer, Allen Murphy, told Guardian Australia. “It’s not something that we are holding away from people, but something that we want people to understand and to share, and to take that into their own life.”

Yothu Yindi translates from the Indigenous language Yolngu Matha as Mother-Child, in a yin-yang kind of way. The Yolngu kinship system divides society into two halves, in which a child is always on the opposite side from their mother. The concept of yothu-yindi represents what Dr Yunupingu once called the “dynamic balance” of life.

The cover of Yothu Yindi album Tribal Voice, featuring the song Treaty. Photograph: AAP Image/Supplied

“We are a band with a philosophy,” he said. “[The] struggle to explain our laws and beliefs is what you hear in Yothu Yindi’s songs [and] yothu-yindi is the name of a fundamental concept in our Yolngu life.”

Samuel Curkpatrick, from the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at Australian National University, says yothu-yindi underpins the whole Yolngu world. He calls it “an expression of unity in diversity, a relationship of difference ... out of which stems good society”. It’s also about “the reciprocal responsibilities of caring for country and family”.

“[Dr Yunupingu] carried the notion of yothu-yindi into his tireless advocacy for a ‘two-ways’ bi-cultural approach.”

The band mixed western and Indigenous styles, languages and musicians. Treaty itself was written collaboratively with Peter Garrett and Paul Kelly, and as good as the original was, it was a dance remix that grabbed mainstream attention.

The remix de-politicised the song, or at least took off its harsh political edges. Great lines were lost, like “The planting of the Union Jack / Never changed our law at all”. The most direct dig at Bob Hawke’s failure to come good on the Barunga statement, “promises can disappear / just like writing in the sand” was swept aside. Not even the beautiful imagery of “the brighter day” when two separated rivers “will be one” made the cut.

And yet the remix was arguably the far more radical version. The song became a Trojan horse in the culture wars, and it landed a mighty (though as yet unrewarded) blow.

It accentuated the song’s Yolnguness, for a start. As well giving the didgeridoo and bilma (clapsticks) a more prominent role, it pointed the spotlight on the song’s Yolngu Matha lyrics. Dr Yunupingu spoke of language being the most important thing to his people, and suddenly people around the world were hearing it (and then, admittedly, butchering it) on their radios for the first time.

The few English words left in the remix are powerful enough to make up for those that were lost. “Treaty, yeah! Treaty, now!” Two lines, on repeat. Mainstream Australia might not have been aware of the song’s missing verses, but it was singing and dancing to this rallying cry. In that way, the Treaty remix was entirely different from the superficial, cultural plunderings of Deep Forest.

“In reality, the success of Yothu Yindi was based on how local they were,” says Murphy. “They brought their local culture out.”

Treaty never achieved what it set out to, at least not in the lifetime of Dr Yunupingu. But it did do a huge amount for reconciliation, not least of which was giving it a great anthem.

• Photos and videos used in accordance with a family statement allowing for photos and videos of Yunupingu to be published